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Knight International Journalism Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary’s mobile news service CGnet Swara (Voice of Chhattisgarh) transformed how people in remote areas of India receive and share news.

The system, developed with the help of Microsoft Research India, allows people to use mobile phones to send and listen to audio reports in their local language. This service circumvents India’s ban on private radio news and reaches people who never before had access to local news.

Choudhary trained more than 100 citizen journalists to produce audio news reports. Nearly 1,400 news reports – verified by professional journalists – have gone out. CGnet Swara receives an average of 200 calls a day from people accessing those reports. Choudhary also created a website where he posts all stories, giving them a global reach.

Officials have directly addressed at least 100 problems or complaints first reported by the service. A report on a police attack on three villages that left two dead, homes burned and women raped was picked up by major media. As a result, the National Human Rights Commission issued a formal report, and the Supreme Court ordered an investigation.

For 10 years the government promised the remote Indian village of Sajan Khar its own well, and for 10 years the villagers struggled with the same four-mile trek to fetch drinking water for themselves and their animals.

Then early this year, Hem Singh Markam used a cell phone to call for help. And 15 days later, two hand-pump wells were delivered.

It is the latest example of what happens when indigenous, tribal communities are able to make their voices heard.

In the remote regions of India, demand is growing for access to Shu Choudhary’s cell phone network -- which allows citizens to send and receive news reports in their own language for the very first time.

When government food deliveries provided for malnourished children in rural India suddenly stopped around the first of the year, Savita Rath and other indigenous workers who care for the children did the best they could to provide meals.

But with food supplies dwindling, Savita also picked up a cell phone and filed a report through CGNet Swara, a mobile news network created by Knight International Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary.

It was a pleasure to hear so many Adivasi languages being spoken in one place: during a recent Democratization of Media workshop held in Koraput and organized jointly by CGnet Swara and Action Aid. Communication makes a community. That’s really what these 37 participants learned in the workshop. They also learned how to communicate more effectively in their own native languages using new tools like mobile phones.

As a Knight International Journalism fellow, I am working on a project that uses mobile technology to enable citizens in India’s most isolated regions to produce and deliver news.

I am sending along a video from a Citizen Journalism Training Workshop we organized in February 2010 in Kunkuri Chhattisgarh. We trained 33 tribal citizens on basics of journalism and on how to report using mobile phones.

In Chhattisgarh there are no tribal journalists or journalists who understand the tribal languages in the state.

In the News

Shu Choudhary's project in India is designed to help tribal communities communicate with each other in their own native tongue. However, as detailed in the international news bulletin Global Post, it's having an unexected impact in the fight to preserve the region's dying languages.

Indian magazine Hardnews features citizen journalists who traveled to Delhi for a six-day workshop organized by Knight Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary. These journalists from rural India report local issues using Choudhary's mobile news network, CGNet Swara. CGNet team member Smita Choudhary discusses the marginalization of Indian tribes by mainstream news sources. “Media is politically and commercially controlled these days. Nobody wants to hear a villager’s story,” she said.

Indian magazine Frontline profiles Knight Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary's altnerative news network, CGNet Swara. The platform enables tribal Indians from a majority illiterate society to report local issues via mobile phones. Once the reports are thoroughly investigated, they are posted to CGNet's website to attract attention of mainstream media and government authorities. The piece covers the project's success stories and workshops teaching citizen journalists to take better advantage of the news platform.

GlobalPost highlights Knight Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary's project CGNet Swara, a mobile-based network that delivers news to rural India. The network skirts India's radio news ban, lending a voice to citizens in a country where democracy is for the rich, Choudhary said.